


I want to see the other side of those ruined doors

by BlazingChes



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Gen, I'm Sorry, Pre-Joui War, Pre-Shouka Sonjuku, except I'm not, slight gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:56:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlazingChes/pseuds/BlazingChes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You always stay there. In that field. Always covered in corpses, either caused by you or war. The location changes, the days pass on, but the fields always remain the same (perhaps you find comfort in that). No matter how much you roam, you always return to a field littered by the bodies of those who no longer breathe.</p><p>Sometimes there are people still alive, screaming or panting out their dying wishes, and sometimes people come specifically for you. To end you, to “save” you, to hurt you. Either way, they die and join the countless dead you see (always seeing, when you close your eyes and when you breathe, when you sleep and when you’re awake, they’re always waiting and always there.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I want to see the other side of those ruined doors

**Author's Note:**

> Wooo, you guys get another Joui fanfic on top of the /other/ Joui fanfics, aren't you excited? *shot*
> 
> But uh, this is gonna take a while, and it's my first fic that I'm posting on here, so tell me how I do? Also first time writing present second tense, so we'll see how that goes *shrugs*
> 
> Enjoy?

There’s blood meandering down a stolen blade, rushing down with an urgency you figure wouldn’t be possible without a type of force and a mission. You would always swing, the blood would always fly away, but now you wanted to see what was so urgent, where it wanted to go. So you watch the beads of red slide down the dreadfully jagged and sharp metal (once smooth, once pristine, but it looks as if years have worn it down and you have used it against so many, in the few hours you’ve had it, even, and you don’t care enough to learn how to take care of it), and you watch them collect and join together. For a second, each glob of drawn together beads hangs, as if it regrets and regrets, but it falls and falls.

Splat. Splat. Drip. Drip.

All land on a corpse’s face, right around his eyes, and they trail slowly now, as if they want to take advantage of every second, as if now they don’t want to leave. They crawl down his cheeks, drag down the sides of his face, and one even makes it to his neck (It makes him red, or redder, because he really was already stained, but the old red never made it to his face). His armor and clothes are tattered and ripped, torn from the cut of swords and arcs from spears, and the vibrant colored cloth is now faded and has red and brown (blood and mud, or perhaps shit) embedded into it, and he is lacking a sword, and yet still reaching for it, as if it was just there before-

‘Oh,’ you think, as the heavy anxiety pumping through your blood settles (just for a moment, just for a moment, it always comes back, again and again). ‘Right, I did this,’ you think, as you play back through the fog that was induced by instincts born from years of scavenging and killing (years of cutting, years of stealing, years of wandering aimlessly with only a goal to survive). He was the first one, the first one whose guts were spilled onto a dirty and almost bare field, where the few patches of grass and weeds are now a dull red. You took his sword when his hand moved, when the muscles clenched and veins bulged, and you took it with the unnatural speed that you had developed (you had to be quick, had to be, otherwise you would die, otherwise all this effort would be wasted). And now, after you cut him and his comrades down without hesitation, the sword was crying. You could have laughed (except you don’t really quite know how to laugh, or exactly care to learn) but instead you plunge the sword into the ground and watch how it leans almost in its master’s direction.

You walk away (there are other blades, less loyal blades, that won’t do troublesome things like make you think it’s crying) and you don’t watch blades cry anymore.

**~*~*~**

They call you a corpse eating demon, which doesn’t quite make sense at first because corpses are nasty and will make a person sick if they’re eaten (you tried it once, it made you sick for days and vomit), but you can certainly see why they call you a demon. You don’t feel anything except anxiety and a weight that hangs in your chest; you don’t smile, you don’t laugh. You feel relief (the sweetest relief, the kind that takes you off your feet and is almost addicting) when you kill, something you do so easily and without hesitation. You don’t hesitate in taking things, even from corpses, if it means you’ll survive another night (clothes, food, swords, bandages, packs, water canteens, and, arguably, their souls). You don’t take joy from anything (not even in the relief, and most definitely not from the killing or taking). You don’t cry or feel sorrow. You are just blank, with periods of anxiety that seems to only break when the relief hits in (always fluctuating with your breathing, always escalating when a person gets too close, only resting when they’re all gone).

Perhaps you _are_ a demon, just like they all say in the roads and towns, in the warnings and posts.

(If so, you discover that you don’t care.)

**~*~*~**

You always stay there. In that field. Always covered in corpses, either caused by you or war. The location changes, the days pass on, but the fields always remain the same (perhaps you find comfort in that). No matter how much you roam, you always return to a field littered by the bodies of those who no longer breathe.

Sometimes there are people still alive, screaming or panting out their dying wishes, and sometimes people come specifically for you. To end you, to “save” you, to hurt you. Either way, they die and join the countless dead you see (always seeing, when you close your eyes and when you breathe, when you sleep and when you’re awake, they’re always waiting and always there.)

Sometimes you think the fields don’t change because you roam in circles, and sometimes you think the fields don’t change because there’s only so much of an area in the world.

(Sometimes, when the silence has come again because the crows and vultures have picked every last piece of flesh away from the corpses, when even the birds get sick of the stench of the rotting, you think the fields never change because the dead are waiting for you to join them, too, just like all the rest that fall.)

**~*~*~**

You find a sword one day that you want to keep. You hold onto it (tightly, tightly, as if someone will rip it away from you), and it helps the anxiety. (You watched it protect people, people behind the samurai, and you wondered if it would protect you too, if it would help you protect yourself.) You keep it close, use it once, twice, and it breaks, allows a sword to stab your shoulder, and all you have is the remains of a broken sword to survive.

And you do. You snarl and bare your teeth, you cut brutally and with hurried swings that lack their usual grace and control, because you feel so desperate, and it does the job, just for the day, just for the sunset. You survive.

But your instincts don’t let you pick up another sword that “protects”, not after it failed to protect you.

**~*~*~**

At first, he (the catalyst, the cause of everything) is just another face you’re about to try to kill (always try, never be sure, you’re always both prey and predator and you know one day you will die, no matter how hard you try to survive). He gets too close, and something about him scares you, enough where you scramble away from his touch (ah, when was the last time you had been touched by something that wasn’t a corpse or a blade?). Anxiety screams with your instincts (cut him, stab him, don’t let him hurt you, don’t let him kill you), and you draw your sword, so ready to kill or be killed. But then he’s throwing you a sword, and you’re so confused (so confused, why would someone throw a demon a sword?). It’s heavier and makes you stumble and nearly spin in an effort to keep balance, but you catch it and hold onto it.

He tells you that it’s a sword that would protect your soul, and you almost drop it then and there. Protection didn’t exist for someone like you (what was protection, anyway?) and you almost prove it, almost drop it or perhaps draw it for the sake of “protecting” yourself. But then words float into the air, and you can’t help but stare, can’t help but consider taking a step forward to follow the strange samurai. Your instincts are roaring in your ears, but your mind is buzzing, and the weight that normally rests in your chest _pulls_ at you, _rips_ into you.

You glance around. Corpses litter the ground, blood stains the patches of grass and weeds (and you, never forget you), and crows and rats are feasting. Flies are congregating to exposed insides and rest so eagerly on frozen eyeballs. It’s your field. The field you live in, eternally.

The samurai starts walking.

A moment passes, your eyes scan the field, and then you follow him, throwing aside the sword you had before the samurai threw you his.

 _Ah_ , you think, _I’m tired of this field._ (You don’t want to come back.)

**~*~*~**

  
(But, several years later, you do anyway.)

**Author's Note:**

> *shuffles feet* Maybe I'll post other chapters (though it probably won't go past six). Maybe not. Eh. I'm gonna start trying to post other stuff though.


End file.
